My computer has a relatively small hard drive which is fast filling up with even a small number of shows. So I'm wondering how you deal with file storage. A typical 1 hour show is about 800Mb for high quality, and about 100-200Mb for low quality. Do you try to download the lower quality versions to save space, or you do you have a way to compress the 800Mb version down to 100-200Mb? Or did you increase your storage by adding to your CPU or buying an external hard drive? External drives have a lot of storage space for relatively cheap, but I hear that the drives have a short life span. Any suggestions?

I personnally vouch for the external hard drives. I am currently buying an additonal 1 TB every year: I'll sure be glad when 10 TB are affordable! My external hardrives are great (western digital passport), but are really sensible to shock: just make sure you don't let them fall on the ground (you may wrap them in a sock like I do (it's a nice colorful sock)). My oldest current external hard drive is 3 year old and work just fine.

Also, yes, go for "low" quality: nowadays the h264 codec (mkv container usually) does wonders (small space for pretty decent quality), and we expect even more from the hi10 codec pretty soon.

Perhaps other people use streaming too?

Large internal hard drives:

3x 1TB
1x 2TB

I never skimp on quality. I've got a very large collection movies, shows, albums, etc. 1TB drives are pretty cheap these days as well.

I bought a 1.5TB drive for storage. I think it's only 5400 RPM too, so it was cheaper and used more for storage instead of actually running programs off of it.

I'm not a laptop person nor do I really carry files around so I just buy internal hard drives.

So far I haven't had or heard from my friends of an external hard drive that lasted more than a year. They are horrible in my opinion, its probably not because of the disks used but rather because their cases are small & cramped (oh I have to look so pretty) and don't dissipate heat fast/efficient enough.

My suggestion is either:
1. Buy a big & serious external drive case (expensive as hell).
2. Buy/use a small HTPC or even regular desktop. If you go this route make sure drives are in direct contact with metal of your case and get an active fan/s to keep drives cool.

In both cases put it somewhere cold and dry in your house with lots of space for active ventilation to work properly. Determine disk size not by overall price but on price per GB.

I've never had a faulty hard drive in my desktops (around 20 years now and a few of them were working 24/7) so I know how to buy drives and how to keep them cool, my latest addition is 1.5TB Caviar Black drive and so far no problems. Don't go cheap, go stable (reviews+look for long guarantees and MTBF) since drives are cheap anyway and what good is having 20-50$ in your pocket if you lost all your data...

i have a mac pro with 4 internal drives:
my system folder and applications are on a 64GB SSD
2 1TB striped raid drives store my mac data
1 1TB drive for a virtual windows partition

I also have an external enclosure for 4 1TB drives in a raid 5 configuration, backing up all 4 aforementioned drives. (interestingly it even backs up the windows drive while parallels is running,... macs are amazing).

here's a nice little article on why you need more storage space than you think: http://macperformanceguide.com/Storage-W...uNeed.html

I download whatever quality is reasonable (in regards to seeders, file size, etc.). Whenever I'm done with old stuff, I delete it.

TheVinster Wrote:I download whatever quality is reasonable (in regards to seeders, file size, etc.). Whenever I'm done with old stuff, I delete it.

This.

All my data files are on an old Linux box over in the corner, which also houses my wiki and HTML testbed. It's backed up daily to another old Linux box in the other corner.

Both of them just have lots of big drives. Easy.

onafarm Wrote:All my data files are on an old Linux box over in the corner, which also houses my wiki and HTML testbed. It's backed up daily to another old Linux box in the other corner.

Both of them just have lots of big drives. Easy.

^This. Just set up a NAS for couple of hundred and your storage issues are all gone. But then comes the backup issues...

DevvaR Wrote:^This. Just set up a NAS for couple of hundred and your storage issues are all gone. But then comes the backup issues...

Set up a raid array and you don't need to back up in the usual sense.

(It doesn't obviate the need offsite backups, of course, if you do those, since a raid array is no more immune to your house burning down than a single disk is.... but most of us probably aren't keeping offsite backups anyway, at least not of entertainment.)

Abandon your hoarder materialism and just delete stuff after you watch it. It is much simpler and it's easy to reget almost anything.

External harddisks dont die any faster than internals. What dies is the poorly made Chinese crap enclosure if you don't get one of the much pricier brands. Just swap the disk into a new case. Ive only lost data on one external and that was because the case started screwing up and I got corruption. The disk itself was fine.